Wings
by Charis M
Summary: “Maybe he's gotten old, too, to not be awed by those he meets – or maybe it's just this new job they've given him, that people are now awed by him instead.” She is his wings. Spoilers through KLG2.


**Wings**  
by Charis 

_Disclaimer: _Battlestar Galactica_ and all associated characters belong to people who are not me. I'm just borrowing._

_Notes: I promised Ilana I'd write her not!Roslin if she wrote Roslin for me; I still maintain she dodged it, but here's Apollo for her. Promise fulfilled. :-P I have no coherent idea what inspired this. Darker than what I'd intended. Vaguely nonspecific future-fic._

_The reason why birds can fly and we can't is simply that they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.  
- J. M. Barrie,_ The Little White Bird

_Can you help me remember how to smile?  
Make it somehow all seem worthwhile?  
- Soul Asylum, "Runaway Train"_

Sometimes he wonders why he stayed.

Kara teased him about the Adama legacy when they named him Commander, but his father was dead, and it was hard to laugh. He remembered the promise he'd made to himself, of quitting the military after Galactica's decommissioning, but it's a distant dream now, hardly more than a shadow of a memory.

He and Kara talked for hours that night, and while the memory has grown hazy, he remembers her saying she wouldn't take the job for a million cubits - not that they're using those any more. Tom Zarek's one political success - except perhaps outliving his arch-rival - was getting them off a cash economy.

So much has changed - so many people dead and gone on their seemingly interminable journey to Earth. He finds it hard to believe that it has only been eighteen months since the Cylon attack on the colonies, especially when he counts the dead. Laura Roslin was one of the first on this second leg of the journey; after their time at Kobol, plotting out the course with the Arrow's aid, she began to fade far more quickly, as if with her task finished, there was little left to cling to. His father followed not long after, never recovering wholly from the Cylons' attempted assassination. Of the older denizens of those early days, Tigh is the only one not dead, but he left all the same after his best friend's death; he's now serving as military advisor to the new president, and when Lee finds his sense of the absurd, he finds the idea laughable.

He doesn't know the new president well; the thin, quiet man who came out of nowhere to defeat both Zarek and Baltar is a competent and sensible politician, and while Lee respects him, there is nothing of the admiration he felt for Roslin. Maybe he's gotten old, too, to not be awed by those he meets - or maybe it's just this new job they've given him, that people are now awed by him instead.

There are so few left of the people he came to know in those first frenetic days, and they have spread out. Billy and Dualla are married, a child on the way. Cally is still there, and Tyrol, and Helo is back with them, but Sharon - the Cylon, he reminds himself, and it is so hard to reconcile the girl he'd come to think of as a friend with the cold-blooded creature who calmly shot his father just over a year ago - is gone, and they've lost a handful of others. Kara's working hard at training them a new generation of pilots, and when he stops in to look at them, all Lee can think of is how young they look.

He's definitely grown old. When he looks in the washroom mirror, he finds it hard to believe he is not yet thirty; being Commander has worn lines into his face, even after a half-dozen months. These days, Kara holds on to hope for both of them, holds to the dream that seems ever further away with such conviction that he cannot but believe, especially when he basks in the fire of her faith. She looks towards Earth, while he concentrates on the day-to-day. He's not sure what he'd do without her, even on nights when the spectre of Zak rises between them and makes things tense and uncomfortable.

When she comes into his quarters that night, both of them off-shift, and plunks the bottle down on the table, he does not protest. She pours two glasses, pushes one towards him and takes the second herself; he lifts his, studying the play of lights through the faintly amber liquid.

"We'll get there," she says.

"When?"

It's a rhetorical question. The problem with the Arrow is that, though it can provide a direction, distance is far vaguer. Kara has learned its use, but she doesn't have the same - whatever - the former President did, and all she's been able to give him are estimates. The first few times he asked, she tried to explain, but now it's just become a habitual exchange.

"One day." She looks at him from across her glass, and he can see, even in the dim light, that time has etched its mark on her as well. She smiles then, something vaguely wistful, very unlike the Kara Thrace most of the world sees. "We'll see Earth, Lee. I promise."

For a long moment, he looks at her wordlessly, but then her fire finds tinder somewhere within him, and he feels his soul lift again. He tilts his glass towards hers. "To Earth," he says, and it is halfway between toast and prayer.

"To Earth," she echoes.

They drink.

_- finis -_


End file.
